The developing world of digital media and its various components and my understanding as Ed Richardson of this ever growing market
Thursday, 27 August 2009
Hyperlocal audience engagement
I've been meaning to write something on audience for a while and recent additions to my followers in Twitter have prompted me to write now.
When writing a blog or even just your 140 character blurt on Twitter you need to consider your audience.
You need to consider what your writing, who your targeting when you write and why you're writing it in the first place.
Twitter is an almost unique platform to write for, once you have a large number of followers or are following a large number of people your content stream will pass by in the blink of an eye.
Writing content that is going to appeal to a specific audience becomes more of an art as you try to catch their attention as it fleets by; to do so you need to engage on a level that's appealing.
Inevitably your audience on Twitter should tune into a similar background as your own. I look at mine on Twitter and it's a mixture of digital & social media folk, outdoor and travelling interests, friends and locals to my geographical location or somewhere I've spent some time at.
This geographical element can sometimes throw a spanner in the works, but it shouldn't. Hyperlocal audiences (I'm adopting the term hyperlocal for this post) can actually provide you with a communication channel that can be the easiest to address.
The hole you have to be careful not to fall into is talking about subject matter that turns the rest of your global audience off, with a high content level that no one else can relate to.
But addressing a hyperlocal audience can introduce a personal tone to your Twitter stream or blog that grants others insight into the person or brand you are, rather than just a URL publishing automaton.
Hyperlocal Twitter communities also assist with the collaborative component to social networking that Twitter can be so great at. While not all of us will get the opportunity to meet great social media luminaries such as Chris Brogan or Jason Falls at SWSX or elsewhere, you should all be able to attend more local events such as TweetUps.
Believe it or not meeting people in the flesh should strengthen any relationship that was established on-line and lead to better collaboration in the future.
Hyperlocal tweeting also adds an element of others being able to relate to specific information, cursing the traffic on the A6 will mean everything to those travelling into work from south Manchester, but not much to those travelling in from south L.A..
As with all things, don't over indulge. A sure fire way of putting anyone off listening to you, is ranting on about stuff that means absolutely nothing to them.
I still think the best way to gauge your conversation balance is to click on your own stream at least once a week and see what you've been twittering on about, that's the first thing I do with others when they follow me, so why not apply the same rule to yourself?
It's sometimes shocking looking some peoples streams, do they realise what it might look like to visitor?
At the end of the day, you should try and make your Twitter as natural as possible, with as little forced content in the stream as possible. This will be the easiest account to maintain as it will be an honest representation of you, but it should also ensure that your audience stays with you and stays engaged, because that's why they followed you in the first place.
Hyperlocal audience engagement shouldn't seem limited to individuals either, on the whole as a brand you'll struggle to find people to champion your brand with stronger conviction than those who feel some allegiance to you from a geographical perspective.
Tap into your local community, in fact Twitter is an ideal way for a brand to illustrate any local community work that they may be taking part in in the near future, attracting attention from both your local followers and hopefully approval from your global audience as well.
At the end of the day, it goes back to what I started with, identify your audience, purpose and content. Once you're there try and keep it as natural as possible to illustrate who you really are as a brand or individual.
Oh, and check your stream at the end of each week and see what you've saying, some days it will shock you.
Methodologies - Don't let yourself get boxed in by them
It seems, like my previous industry IT, digital media is slowly becoming obsessed with associating itself with methodologies such as Prince2 for nothing more than the assurance that comes from a recognised name.
Whilst it might be perceived that I have a personal agenda here, not being qualified in Prince2, I hope that there is another, more objective, outcome from this post.
Recognised methodologies are a very good way to assist anyone with trying to find some clarity in the grey fog that can descend when you're up to your neck in delivery deadlines. They provide you with a framework that can help you work towards your delivery targets whilst providing others around you with some insight into "how things are going".
They can give you the steps you should follow in order to achieve the successful delivery of projects. Some believe (some really do, I've worked with several) that as long as you tick all the chosen methodology check boxes long the way, your projects will have been a success.
This is nonsense and I would hope those behind the leading methodologies would be the first to agree with this sentiment.
In this fast paced competitive world, we are all seeking that edge that gets you the contract over your competitors. Equally, we are all looking to ensure that we cover our positions and define accountability in order to exonerate ourselves of any blame.
It is in my opinion, now becoming an obsession within the digital media industries to focus on naming a methodology to be used rather than the more important matter that the methodologies were originally designed for - delivering projects successfully, on time and on budget with transparency for all involved.
Where is this obsession coming from? Well I believe it to be a self perpetuating force. Agencies are looking to distinguish themselves from the crowd (or as is becoming the cause, towing the line) and clients are looking for common methodology to reassure themselves that the project management that they'll be receiving will be of an acceptable level.
We all need to have reassurance in areas that we might not understand ourselves. For instance when booking a plumber to help us with our gas boiler at home, the first thing we ask is are you Corgi registered? The almost blind reassurance we get from the registration provides us with the comfort that the individual knows what they are doing.
Project methodologies and qualifications in the methodologies are not quite the same. Using the same analogy of gas plumbing, it's akin to being qualified in installing large corporate boilers but never having had any experience with small home based appliances. You know the principles, but you might have to guess the bits in-between.
Wouldn't it be better to ask for testimonials and past track records?
The Prince2 methodology is a well developed, well supported and popular methodology that's used across the world in many different industry sectors. Does this mean it's appropraite for the delivery of every type of project? No.
Web project management more often than not needs to be flexible, as functionality is developed ideas develop and the project can evolve. As a project manager you need to be able to draw a line between minor adaptations and scope changing functionality.
You then also need to consider these changes on a client by client basis, providing a project management structure that is appropraite for the way the client likes to work. Sure there are times when you need to stand firm and state that a change is outside of the scope and will have to be dealt with in another phase. Then there are other times when you'll need to revise the delivery schedule on-the-fly.
To complicate matters, not only do you need to deliver on a client by client basis, but you also need to deliver on a project by project basis for each client. Larger scale projects can lend themselves to more structured and strict approaches. Smaller project can be expected to be delivered on a very flexible basis.
Then there's the standard documentation that can accompany a Prince2 project, sometimes this documentation is just too formal for some clients and they prefer a more story like approach to a delivery process.
At the end of the day, what I'm trying to convey is that we can't just state we deliver all our projects via a Prince2 method or by any other single method, because we don't. There's a good reason why, that's because I don't believe there is one methodology that is always appropraite. We need to pick an approach or a methodology that is appropraite for the project.
This should not be seen as a slight on Prince2, Agile, Scrum, Waterfall or any other type of methodology, as they are all thoroughly well developed and accepted approaches of delivery and I like elements of them all.
It is, however, a slight on the practice of naming a well known methodology in the hope that this instils the reassurance required to win business without ever necessarily needing to use the methodology in practice.
Instead of focusing on the specific methodology, we should spend more time focusing on the method.
Whatever the chosen approach or methodology, it should always hold the two key principles of definition and communication at it's heart.
Brands on Friendfeed - A different proposition to Twitter
Following on from my relatively popular post on 10 brands on Twitter, I thought I'd repeat the operation with Friendfeed, a far more daunting proposition.
These posts can take some time to come from an idea into a completed post, in that time a lot has changed for Friendfeed. Facebook has recently bought Friendfeed, causing some to throw their arms up in disgust and others to declare that this will be the making of the less known micro-blogging platform.
I'll save what I think this will mean for Friendfeed for another post, but for now I'll continue with what I intended to write about, brands on Friendfeed.
While this might seem like flogging a dead horse, I don't agree. Twitter has now established itself within the mainstream media, Friendfeed on the other hand is still in the realm of early adopters.
One of the main points I noticed during the Twitter post was the large increase in activity and account creation since the beginning of 2009. I'll be interested to see if there has been the same enthusiasm to embrace a social media platform that is yet to hit the media spotlight with a bang.
Friendfeed, for those that don't know, is very similar to Twitter in that it allows you to "microblog" but without the same 140 character limitation. In addition to micro-blogging, Friendfeed allows you to consolidate or aggregate all of your social media activity into one stream.
It keeps the same following/follower facility as Twitter, allowing you to tailor your feed to your industry interests. Creating lists of specific people around subject matter to customise your feed.
Enough on Friendfeed's service and on to the brands, my first port of call was Being Peter Kim's excellent social media wiki to see what it had to offer. I extracted these three brands from there:
Rubbermaid
Not a brand that is very well recognised in the UK, we still talk about Tupperware. Rubbermaid have been mixing it up on the social media front, with feeds coming from Twitter, Blogs, Google Reader, Stumbleupon, YouTube and Pownce.
With all of these streams quite active (except for Pownce due it no longer being operational) Rubbermaid are taking the social media channel for what it's worth and good on them. They seem honest and down to earth in content, engaging social media at level that gets the best from the channel in my belief.
With plenty of activity on Twitter, promotional product promotions on YouTube and staff pictures at a recent staff fun day on Flickr I like what I see.
Daimler
I'm at a bit of a disadvantage with Daimler as my German isn't up to scratch to allow me to gauge the conversation level very well. This point in itself is important though, in that Daimler have obviously made the decision that their social media audience, or at least the ones they are targeting, are predominantly German speaking.
They have a good mix of mediums, with a Flickr, YouTube, Mister Wong (bookmarking), SlideShare and a blog feed coming into their Friendfeed stream. Their Flickr feed alone is interesting, presenting a very uniform approach to image distribution using cropped wide format shots only.
I had a quick look to see if I could find any presence of a Mercedes Benz Friendfeed, to see if they were presenting a more international stream, but couldn't find anything.
Daimler seems to have grasped the concept of Friendfeed well.
EMC
EMC are fully on board with Friendfeed with over 20 feeds coming into their Friendfeed stream. This is brand that I'm fully aware of from my time working in IT Infrastructure. A very strong competitor in the storage and information hardware market.
The majority of EMC's Friendfeed streams content is coming from the large selection of blogs they are streaming. I couldn't identify whether all of these blogs are run by undeclared members of staff or whether they are just relevant in content. If just relevant in content, EMC having taken an interesting step away from the normal control that brands like to have on their on-line presence.
With 3 YouTube streams, a large Flickr stream, a busy Delicious stream and 2 Twitter streams EMC seem at least to be attempting to have a global approach to social media.
After taking a quick look at these three Friendfeed streams I returned to my searches for other brands that appear on Friendfeed.
Pepsi
My search lead me to the Pepsi Cooler, not a stream, but a Friendfeed room. A room that looks like it could do with some attention! The room had four feeds coming into it, an official Pepsi Twitter feed that is busy, another expired Twitter feed, an expired Flickr feed and an unused YouTube account - Is this how Pepsi do Friendfeed?
At first I was a little lost trying to recognise the Pepsi branding, whether it was a new or an older logo and it reminded me of a Greg Verdino post I'd read recently on Greg's Posterous.
To say I was disappointed to see how neglected the Pepsi Cooler room was is an understatement. With the illustrious name of Steve Rubel and three leading lights on Pepsi social media team listed at the top of the room I'd expect more from an easily accountable presence.
Pepsi either need to give up their claim on the Friendfeed room or take some time to do some maintenance on the rooms streams.
Cisco
I had subscribed to Cisco's Digital Cribs Twitter feed a while back, so thought I'd check out whether they were using Friendfeed. Sure enough they were.
Cisco seem to have two Friendfeed streams, Cisco Learning and News at Cisco. Well these are the only Cisco Friendfeed streams I've found.
The News at Cisco is simply a conglomeration of all of their news blogs and site news feeds. I suppose a handy one stop shop for those looking to follow Cisco news development, but there's nothing more insightful from the Cisco social media presence. This hardly takes advantage of the potential offered by Friendfeed, but it still seems to serve a purpose, utilising it for news content aggregation.
The Cisco Learning feed on the other hand seems to take advantage of more of Friendfeed's capabilities. With streams coming in from Twitter, YouTube, Digg, Delicious and Google Reader.
The Twitter account was registered September 2008 and the Friendfeed account only days later. While these aren't old accounts, they have been around well before the recent surge in Twitter uptake and certainly before any interest was really shown in Friendfeed. So a hat tip to them on their relatively early adoption.
The Digg account however hasn't been used since it was created and should probably be dropped from the feed. Leaving a used, but only lightly, Delicious account. The Google reader account seems to have had some attention spent on it and the YouTube account is being used well to share video content published by Cisco.
All in all Cisco seem to be giving Friendfeed a go with their learning arm of the business.
Virgin America
I included Virgin's Twitter account, for their Atlantic arm of the business in my original 10 Brands on Twitter article. Sadly this Friendfeed account seems little more than a simple replication of a Twitter feed on Friendfeed. Something that is all too common.
While it's great for a brand to explore all of these options for social media promotion, if they decide it's not serving any real purpose then they should stop using the platform.
Sharing Twitter content on Friendfeed does give them a presence on the platform, but it doesn't add much value to their social media channel. I'll be honest, the good majority of my Friendfeed is Twitter content, but that's the nature of Twitter more than anything. I have however, at some time, added content to all of the streams on my Friendfeed. Equally I'm not a global brand and therefore not likely to be under the same spot light as Virgin can find themselves.
National Trust
A charity (I'm pleased to be a member of) that has been using Twitter successfully for a while now has, I discovered, also got a presence on Friendfeed.
Admittedly it only feeds in its Twitter stream and its YouTube stream, but that's one more stream than Virgin America and Pepsi can manage. Who would of thought, the National Trust getting one over Pepsi and Virgin America in a brand awareness exercise.
What it did help me find was the customised YouTube page that the National Trust have taken the time to create, well done to them for taking advantage of these features to ensure better brand relationship on a third party site.
I like the way the National Trust has integrated their involvement in social media back to the main National Trust website.
They seem to have grasped social media and the Friendfeed platform and I love their video content on YouTube - How to build your own wormery.
As with the investigation into brands on Twitter, it was interesting to explore various brands usage of the Friendfeed social media platform.
As expected, the adoption or use of Friendfeed by brands seems much lower in comparison to Twitter. Friendfeed requires more commitment than the relatively simple upkeep of a Twitter account (although even this is not always simple) and therefore it was less likely to have the large numbers of brands that can be found on Twitter.
That said, a true commitment to a platform like Friendfeed could provide a brand with a complete portfolio of on-line content for visitors to consume. Presenting video, micro-blogging, bookmarking and even music content for followers to view.
An interesting, yet obvious, stream that I found on a number of brands Friendfeed's was the SlideShare application. Ideally suited to brands that might be presenting on a regular basis at events and wishing to share this content beyond the life of the event itself.
I'll be interested to see how Friendfeed develops after its recent acquisition and how this development will affect brands possible adoption of the platform as a publishing tool.
After reading the post, I was left thinking how well written it was and how it had all the right elements of becoming a successful and popular post.
At the time I was very busy with my work and had been struggling to dedicate the time I like to my blog. The writing ideas had dried up and the drafts prepared in my publish queue were looking tired and old.
After some time off, I usually publish at least twice a week, the ideas have slowly started returning.
Taking some time out and allowing your brain to slow down a little from the usual manic idea generating and production managing mayhem that can take hold of the creative energies, allows for some much needed reflection.
From this reflection I find the order starts to return and ideas start to flow more naturally once more rather than the forced process that often happens under stressed situations.
Ideas generated under stressful situations are never as good as ideas that are allowed time to formulate and develop properly. These ideas can lead to new digital campaigns or just new copy for a blog.
This weekend just gone a took time out with my family and friends to attend the Big Chill festival as mentioned on my Posterous. It was a great opportunity for my mind to revisit old times with a good supply of music, great conversation and a generally relaxed atmosphere in great weather.
I came back some what exhausted from the lack of sleep, induced from trying to balance seeing as many of the artists as possible and then early rises with my two year old daughter, but strangely refreshed and revitalised.
Now that I'm slowly recovering from the sleep deprivation the ideas are slowly bubbling away again and its giving me the ability to write once more and suggest ideas to clients and staff.
So, next time your stuck for what to do next, how to write a piece of copy or where to turn for creativity, instead of forcing the situation take a step back.
It can't always been done in such style as a weekend trip to a festival, but even a walk around the block can be enough time to reorder your thoughts and refocus your attentions properly with a little reflection.
We all need a break from our work sometimes in order to give the best when demanded, recognising when you need to do it is what takes time to learn.
Is social media the perfect tonic to pre-recession greed?
I'm sitting here reading reports of HSBC and Barclays billion pound profits whilst still waiting for the economic gloom to lift from Joe Average's life.
I don't think anyone is unaware that the worlds economic situation is far from rosy at the moment; we are, as the financial reporters keep stating, "in the depths of a recession".
As the reports surface of the city's slow recovery, or not so slow, the public outcry can be heard to be rising in volume. Hang on, we helped you and now it's back to the them and us scenario, the haves and have nots.
We found ourselves in this recession on the back of some very dubious lending of extended equity to everyone from individuals to big businesses, the bubble could never burst.
And then it did . . .
The banks and other large institution became monsters. Not only were they asking for our money to help them out of the hole they'd dug, but they are adding insult to injury by laying off large numbers of staff.
We see the occasional news interview with the leaders of these institution, but other than that the sector is very quiet.
Meanwhile, we all feel rather cheated by the whole experience. Consumers, that's you and me, feel like the prices of pretty much all of our services have reached levels that we could never have comprehended just a few years ago.
This prices have been followed by a gradual alienation of consumers from their suppliers. We receive letters detailing our latest charges, but if you try to speak to someone they never answer the phone.
What happens? We become frustrated, a sensation of having no control of our own destinies overwhelms us.
In this economic gloom and age of inadequate communication between consumers and their suppliers there is one rising phoenix, the firebird that is social media.
It could be the very tonic that we all need to settle our feeling of uneasiness at the pre-recession greed that many of the worlds leading institutions have been accused of.
Social media offers large corporations or local businesses the ability to add that personal communication channel back to their public proposition.
Build the trust back that's been ground down by the gradually reduction in service and the gradually increase in cost.
But before all business jump on the social media bandwagon, it needs to be made clear that in the first instance it isn't to make it into a revenue stream. It's to re-establish the trust that has been eroded.
I would say that it has to be run at a loss, but that's not true. We need to evolve our thinking beyond monetary terms and value the relationships we can build by engaging with our consumers and audiences again.
When I wrote my article on 10 brands on Twitter a few weeks back, I wasn't surprised when I didn't find any of the UK banks on Twitter.
I hear you ask, well what would HSBC do with a Twitter account?
Well start a conversation about what they do would be a start, or even just showing that they are listening to concerns. Sure they'd be in for some hot treatment, but at least they could be commended for giving it an honest go. It would certainly improve my opinion of them.
But a clued up, brand aware communication specialist that knows what it means to be part of the big machine that these large corporations are, but a human all the same, should be able to present a clear message.
Heck, they could even hire a social media advisor to advise them.
So, will we see any of the banks investing their £3 billion profit in building those cracked and broken bridges between themselves and their beleaguered customers?
